When former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo rose to power as the country’s chief executive back in 2001, she carried with her the promise of new politics — politics that is not personality-based, free of dubious acts and from pretenses, mimicry, and corruption. It is a bright image to promise, a dream that, for many, seemed very possible at the time, especially in light of the successful overthrowing of Arroyo’s predecessor through the second EDSA people power revolution. But let’s be honest: anyone who has been alive in the last decade and a half would know that this promise of new politics crumbled pretty quickly.
As The LaSallian celebrates its 55th anniversary this month, we look back at some of the headlines that defined the last five and a half decades in La Salle and in the country. It is clear that, while the names and faces often do change, the problems and issues remain the same. This is true not just on the national scale — a worrying fact as the 2016 national and local elections loom ever closer — but also within the University.
To this day, we suffer from the same issues that countless other leaders had promised to solve. To be fair, none of these issues are ever easy to solve by any single leader or administration, but nothing new can be said about the way national politics is going, matuwid or otherwise. Headlines are still filled with stories on corruption, and Arroyo’s aforementioned predecessor, ousted though he was after being found guilty of plunder, has since then been restored to power in the nation’s capital. Arroyo herself remains under hospital arrest for alleged misuse of state funds and electoral sabotage, while simultaneously holding office as a member of the House of Representatives. Dynasties continue to thrive in government offices and the upcoming polls, while millions of pesos’ worth of aid for Yolanda victims remain missing or wasted, and justice for the deaths of countless journalists, Lumads, and members of the LGBT community is still not granted.
In the University setting, news of entire political slates or over a hundred candidates disqualified or deemed ineligible in the student elections are not new. Low student voter turnouts are not new. Allegations of electioneering, late submissions of candidacy requirements, mudslinging, and election boycotts called for by political parties are not new.
Anyone who’s had a glimpse of history would tell you that it most definitely repeats itself, while a cynic would tell you that the only thing that people learn from history is that people never learn from history.
But last March’s failure of elections should be seen as a new low, one big warning sign, a call to change. It is good that our student leaders have begun to stray away from making student apathy their scapegoat for everything that’s happening, an old habit built from ages of latching on to party politics harder than student representation. Evidently, it is time to reflect on how students are expected to participate in something they have had little reason to believe in, especially in light of the fiasco that is the last General Elections and, more recently, the Temporary Restraining Order imposed over a provision that should have been addressed weeks ago.
With the Special Elections (SE) voting period for the University Student Government (USG) of AY 2015-2016 set to commence, the question of whether or not the USG carries any clout at all over the lives of students shouldn’t be one that makes our leaders bemoan student apathy. The question is a perfectly valid one, and addressing it would spell the key to making this year’s SE a successful endeavor — and hopefully it would be, with all the time, energy, and resources poured into making the elections work on the third try.
While the promise of new politics definitely can not be fulfilled by any one person or institution any time soon, especially in the national setting, it does not have to remain a distant dream. As this year’s SE unfolds against a backdrop of an ever more absurd national elections, it is of utmost importance to take steps towards restoring the students’ faith in a system that should be, first and foremost, of the students, by the students, and for the students. There is something to be said about a political system that exists for itself, and it is this: it is as far away from ‘new’ as can be, and it is time we finally put that behind us.
